May 4, 2010

Google Transliteration IME for windows 64-bit and 5 more languages

As engineers on the Google Transliteration team, we are very excited to let you know about the launch of the Google Transliteration IME for windows 64-bit and covering 5 more languages (Amharic, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tigrinya) making it 19 languages in total. An IME is an "Input Method Editor" and simply refers to software that lets you type in a language of your choice. Once you download the Google Transliteration IME (it's free and there's no signup required), you can type a word the way it sounds using Latin characters and it will convert the word to its native script. For example, typing "hamesha" transliterates into Hindi as : हमेशाGoogle Transliteration IME offers several features focused on an improved user experience. With this launch we have added two more key features: Canonical Schemes and Macros. Canonical transliteration schemes help the users to define their own basic key mappings (like ISCII standard for many Indic languages) which may be familiar to them than using Google IME's intuitive key mappings. Macros feature enables the user to add their own shortcut character sequences for their mostly typed or complex words.It is currently available in 19 different languages - Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu, Tigrinya, and Urdu. This application enables users to create content or communicate in their preferred language online or offline and in any application of their choice. The Google Transliteration IME currently supports 32-bit/64-bit Windows 7/Vista/XP. For more information on Google’s Transliteration IME please visit our help page.Google Transliteration is also available in Blogger, Gmail, Knol, Orkut and as a bookmarklet. You can also enable it on your website using the transliteration API.